tcm alert thread (Jun '23 - tcm alert: dead)

I taped Outcast of the Islands last night. Still unavailable on DVD!

yeah Man's castle had originally been scheduled in June..can't wait!

Stan & Ollie in blackface this morning :o

have they entirely stopped showing trashy movies on friday nights?

oh wait they're coming back next month NEVER MIND

yeah, it's hard to find, like, Greg Peck cult movies

Better get these in before the shutdown:

Thursday September 4 - Jewel Robbery and then immediately after Tay Garnett's One Way Passage. Both left me a bit underwhelmed but both are spoken of highly so proceed accordingly.

Sunday September 7 - Harriet Craig, one of Joan Crawford's very best. About a woman who loves her house more than any human being including her husband played appropriately by the actor with the wussiest name in all of classical Hollywood, Wendell Corey. The ending is NOT sad! Much better and more coherent than Dorothy Arzner's 1936 pass at the story, Craig's Wife.

12 Friday
11:00pm CST
Secrets (1933)
A New England society girl braves the West to help her husband build his fortune. Cast: Mary Pickford, Leslie Howard, C. Aubrey Smith. Dir: Frank Borzage. BW-90 mins

Never seen it. Anyone?

not me

Morbs, if you are still on your Fritz Lang jag, try to catch Teh Blue Gardenia Sunday morning at 8.

18 Thursday
4:30 PM Terror In A Texas Town (1958) - Joseph H. Lewis' wacky whaler western

And then on Friday, there are three country music pix I've been meaning to catch:

19 Friday
11:00 AM The Fastest Guitar Alive (1967)
When the Civil War ends, Confederate spies have to return the fortune they just stole. Cast: Roy Orbison, Sammy Jackson, Maggie Pierce. Dir: Michael Moore. C-87 mins, TV-PG
12:30 PM Hootenanny Hoot! (1963)
Television producers discover country/western music at a small-town college. Cast: Peter Breck, Ruta Lee, Johnny Cash. Dir: Gene Nelson. BW-92 mins, TV-G
2:15 PM Your Cheatin' Heart (1964)
Legendary country-western singer Hank Williams uses alcohol to deal with the pressures of fame. Cast: George Hamilton, Susan Oliver, Red Buttons. Dir: Gene Nelson. BW-99 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format

hey hey hey...i don't know if this has been discussed...

but can someone explain to me why ROSE MCGOWAN is now working at TCM and introducing movies?

i mean i was all jazzed about watching Night of the Hunter when...she was on there conspicuously throwing out "big words" like "laconic" and getting impressed with herself and it ruined the first half hour of the movie for me

NOTHING could ruin any single minute of what David Ehrenstein calls "the greatest movie ever filmed on American soil."

I thought she was just a celeb guest. Not sure she has a permanent job there.

no i think she does! i've heard that she introduces other movies on the weekend but i hope it's an inaccurate rumor

I think her only gig there is cohost of "The Essentials," taking over for Carrie Fisher...?

Yeah that's what I thought too.

Eh. it's fine with me. Just show DOWNSTAIRS (1932) again please, TCM!!!!!!!!

Bunch of early, rare musicals on tomorrow morning starting at 5am CST:

Street Girl (1929) - dig: "A girl from the wrong part of town finds a new life managing a jazz band."
Rio Rita (1929)
Dixiana (1931)
Girl Crazy (1932) - music by The Gershwins

Latter three with Wheeler and Woolsey.

i have a W&W t shirt, but lots of their stuff is pretty dire.

Yes, this is true. But I'd love to see/hear some Gershwin standards in their (ok still butchered but...) original context.

Missed Devil's Doorway. Did anyone catch it?

And does ANYONE have the Fox Movie Channel? No one seems to know it even exists.

On NYC Time Warner Cable, Fox Movie Channel is free on channel 257, but nobody knows about it. It mostly sucks though.

yes, they're heavy on the last decade.

Dassin's Naked City & Brute Force tom'w night (TCM).

In Sunday night's silent slot, Headin' Home starring Babe Ruth!

4 Jacques Tati films tonight.

lol George Hamilton triple bill. Followed in wee hrs by The Apple and Roller Boogie.

Paul Newman all day and night Sunday.

I worship The Apple. In the wee hours so Robert Osbourne (sp?) won't have to introduce it. Still, I pray TCM won't slip into AMC trash programming.

Monday the 13th, Syncopation (1942): A young trumpeter rises through the jazz world and finds love. Cast: Jackie Cooper, Adolphe Menjou, Bonita Granville. Dir: William Dieterle

4 Jacques Tati films tonight.

GAHHH

oh wait i don't have time to watch tv anymore anyway lol

They're all on disc too

Re "trash programming": Late Fridays are for cult stuff. Even for stuff cults won't touch (like Wicked Wicked).

I've always wanted to see that but keep missing it. I'm too lazy to check: is the ENTIRE film in split screen?

Yep. It's not very good at all, but the best jokes are made via the contradictions between what you see on one side and the other. The two songs that Tiffany Bolling sings are gaspingly awful.

May be coming on again soon?

can anyone recommend Jodie Foster in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane? late tonight

I saw it a thousand years but I never forgot the twist ending. Go for it.

I liked it. Would watch again.

curious to see how you take it.
paedo vibe throughout; martin sheen on a roll; Foster body double nip shot

I just watched it recently. it's got a very play-like feel and lotsa lol 70s aesthetics but I always dug the suburban gothic vibe it purveys. acting is pretty good, especially sheen fueling his thankless paedo role with fearless creepiness.

when I was a kid it fueled my childhood fantasies of living by myself. if you remember what it was like being the weirdo smart kid you will prolly identify w/ foster's character.

factoid: body double is foster's older sister

Did anyone here see on Wednesday - or at any time before - Gregory La Cava's (My Man Godfrey) STAGE DOOR ?

Jesus what a cast - 1937's Katherine Hepburn (un-annoying), Ginger Rogers (astonishing, savage, career-best dramatic performance hands down), pre-stardom Lucile Ball, Adolphe Menjou, Eve Arden and a v. adolescent (14 yrs old) Ann Miller! Almost all women cast, everything "The Women" purports to be but actually entertaining, and line after line of witty, merciless, non-stop zings.

Quite a find...!

I was gonna catch that, but there are already so many movies on my TiVo that something had to give.

sure, Stage Door > The Women

that Jodie movie is kinda badly directed and written, but she makes it work.

I watch Stage Door every few months (Hepburn's scene in Menjou's office is one of her very best). The only mystery is why Andrea Leeds' total drip of a performance got the only Oscar nod.

Dated tragic-character sympathy factor, expected to be long-lasting tragedienne enthusiasm, otherwise I don't understand why

Alfred: Oscar's taste has always blown.

Stage Door is lovely. But The Women (1939) has been pushing and pulling me ever since Chicago Channel 32 showed it many, many, many years ago (although now that I think of it, I saw Stage Door almsot as early).

Things Stage Door lacks:

1. Joan Crawford
2. The world-historic fashion show
3. The greatest costume design of all-time (beach outfit with hand)
4. The second greatest (Sylvia's "Seeing Eye" top)
5. A line as great as "Oh the publicity! La publicité!"
6. Crystal's bathtub
7. No men (yes, yes, they're "there" but it makes a difference)
8. As bald an exploration into "the class feeling you run into nowadays"
9. The talk between Miriam and Mary in Reno
10. Joan Crawford

20 Monday
5:00 AM Kongo (1932)

A crippled madman seeks revenge on the daughter of the man who betrayed him. Cast: Walter Huston, Lupe Velez, Conrad Nagel.

I thought I had this on tape but I can't find it. I hear it's still pretty brutal to watch.

Sorry, Kevin, but I'm with Pauline Kael on The Women (who would no doubt apply the same criticism to the "Sex and the City" movie).

Also: I was struck by how unfunny it is.

Roz is HILARIOUS in it! In the lunch scene at Mary's, check out her eyes after Nancy asks "Well, Sylvia, feeling better?"

23 Thursday
7:30 AM My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)

Dir: Joseph H. Lewis

tom'w eve:

6:30 PM Cop Hater (Berke, 1958) - BW-75 mins. - From an Evan Hunter/Ed McBain novel, this B-film stars Robert Loggia as a detective at the fictional 87th Precinct looking into several killings of police officers without any obvious connection. The rest of the cast seems mostly unknown (to me anyway), with the exceptions of a young Jerry Orbach and Vincent Gardenia. United Artists is the credited distributor, putting MGM in control of the rights. It’s not on DVD.

http://filmjournal.net/clydefro/2008/10/17/the-tcm-ten-1018-1024/

I think that's based on the first of the bazillion 87th Precinct movies.